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Monday, 25 August 2008

Yes at last I have got photos of the new pool at Goubli. I wanted to wait until we had all the pool furniture. We got really lucky with that and got a lot of stuff from the New Winter Palace hotel which is being demolished. We had it recovered and that took time. But I am really pleased with the material. The pool area covers all the the back of the property with a shower area and toilet block as well as snack bar and poolside bar. We are planning to have cold drinks, sandwiches, chips, salads available. As well as crisps, sweets and ice cream. We have planted some shrubs, I asked them to get smelly ones like Jasmine so when they get established it will be really fragrant. But mainly it is an area for sun bathing. In the afternoon you do get shade but I think we will get some umbrellas to complete the picture.

This is the view from the balcony of Out, which is the first balcony floor. Brits would call it the 1st floor but Americans and Egyptians call it the 2nd floor. As you can see the balcony is a gorgeous place to relax on overlooking both the pool and the Nile in the distance. Surrounded by sugar cane fields and farm land yet conveniently close to the ferry and the Valley of Kings and other pharaonic sites. In fact you can see the temple of Hatshepsut from the flats.

Saturday, 23 August 2008

The Ministry of Transport, Egypt has launched a online ticket booking service in collaboration with the Ministry of State for Administrative Development. The IT Department will maintain the service at the Egyptian National Railways Authority and the National Commercial Bank.

Passengers can book their tickets from the www.egyptrail.gov.eg. Using the service requires a user account, which can be created on the website, and a Visa or MasterCard. The credit card owner can either be the main passenger or a relative of the main passenger and the card used must be issued from Egypt. However, the service does not offer the discount privileges that are available at ticket booths. Each user can purchase five tickets per train and a total of 10 tickets per day in no more than three transactions per card on the same day. After the seat is reserved, the page redirects users to the website of the National Commercial Bank to fill out credit card information and personal information, namely an e-mail address and telephone number where passengers can be reached. Canceling a reservation will mean canceling of all tickets under the same reservation number. Upon cancellation, users receive a 90 percent refund.

Yes the card used must be issued from Egypt. now how stupid is that and what on earth is the point. It is foreigners that 1) have credit cards 2) want to book trains 3) have no access to ticket booths. Argh!!!!!

Saturday, 16 August 2008

You know it is getting near Ramadan when the Moulid comes along. The Muslim calender is a lunar one not solar so events move every year.

Some people believe this Moulid is based on the Ancient Opet Festival when boats used to parade through the streets.

There are various 'floats' which sometimes seem to have a theme but other times just seem to be fun.

Children get party hats, there is stick fighting, horse races. Some of the horses have these incrediblly fancy saddles which cost a lot of money. It is noise, dusty and overwhelming but lots of fun for all the family. Tourists are totally welcome but it can be nicer to watch from a safe venue like the Venus Hotel bar.

Even the camels join in and are decorated although this one look bored with the whole procedings

CAIRO, Egypt: Egyptian scientists are carrying out DNA tests on two mummified fetuses found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun to determine whether they are the young pharaoh’s offspring, Egyptian antiquity authorities said Wednesday.

The two tiny female fetuses, between five to seven months in gestational age, were found in the King Tut’s tomb in Luxor when the tomb was disovered by Howard Carter in 1922.

DNA samples from the fetuses “will be compared to each other, along with those of the mummy of King Tutankhamun,” the head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, said in a statement.

The testing is part of a wider program to test the DNA of hundreds of mummies to determine their identities and their family relations, and Hawass said the program could help determine Tutankhamun’s family lineage, which has long been a source of mystery among Egyptologists.

The identity of Tut’s parents is not firmly known. Many experts believe he is the son of Akhenaten, the 18th Dynasty pharaoh who tried to introduce monotheism to ancient Egypt, and one of Akhenaten’s queens, Kiya. But others have suggested he was the son of a lesser known pharaoh who followed Akhenaten.

Scholars believe that at the age of 12, Tutankhamun married Ankhesenamun — a daughter of Akhenaten by his better known wife Nefertiti — but the couple had no surviving children. There has been no archaeological indication that Tut, who died around the age of 19 under mysterious circumstances over 3,000 years ago, left any offspring.

Tutankhamun was one of the last kings of Egypt’s 18th Dynasty and ruled during a crucial, turmoil-filled period, when Akhenaten’s monotheism was ended and powers were returned to the priests of ancient Egypt’s multiple deities.

The council said that if the tiny mummies are unrelated to Tut, they may have been placed in his tomb to allow him to “live as a newborn in the afterlife.”

Ashraf Selim, a radiologist and member of the Egyptian team, said the tests could take several months. So far, the team has carried out CT scans on the two fetuses and taken samples for DNA tests.

“We want to find out the truth and facts relevant to the history of these kings,” Selim told The Associated Press.

Since they were found in King Tut’s tomb, the mummified fetuses were kept in storage at the Cairo School of Medicine and were never publicly displayed or studied, Selim said.

Hawass has announced ambitious plans for DNA tests on Egyptian mummies, including tests on all royal mummies and the nearly two dozen unidentified ones stored in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. He has said the tests may show that some royal mummies on display are not who archaeologists thought them to be.

One of his top goals is to find the mummy of Nefertiti, the queen legendary for her beauty.

Last year, Egypt announced that archaeologists had identified the mummy of Hatshepsut, Egypt’s most powerful queen and the only female pharaoh. But scientists later said they were still analyzing DNA from the bald, 3,500-year-old mummy to try to back up the claim.

Hawass has long rejected DNA testing on Egyptian mummies by foreign experts, and only recently allowed such projects on condition they be done exclusively by Egyptians. A $5 million DNA lab was created at the Egyptian Museum, with funding from the Discovery Channel.

But some experts have warned that Hawass is making claims like that of Hatshepsut too quickly, without submitting samples to a second lab to corroborate DNA tests or publishing the results in peer-reviewed journals, both common practice.

The council announced in its statement Wednesday that the governent had agreed with Cairo University’s Faculty of Medicine to open a second DNA testing lab, though it did not give details on funding for the lab or when it could begin work.

Abdel-Halim Nour el-Deen, a former head of the council and a leading Egyptologist said DNA testing on mummies thousands of years old is very difficult.

“It is doubtful that it could produce a scientific result to determine such important issues such as the linage of pharaohs,” Nour el-Deen told the AP.

“We haven’t seen any of their results,” he said. “Such announcements are good for publicity … They sell well in the media.”

Saturday, 2 August 2008

Sorry about the delay in getting out a new Update for until recently I had little new information to offer. After a few months of medication, I was scheduled for a CT-scan early this month and then had to wait until some meetings with the doctors to get the results. Am most pleased to report there is no indication of any return of the tumor which was removed back in January. I am scheduled to continue with the costly pills for a few months, and during that time I have to report just once a month for blood tests. If all goes well, it maybe possible to dispense with the medications soon and just have occasional check-ups.

Plans will go forward for a winter season in the KV. As we are now affiliated with the SCA, we have had some correspondence with Dr. Zahi Hawass and Dr. Magdy el Ghandour, who have been brought up to date on my medical situation. Next, we will soon ask for some clarifications on the proposal and security issues. The proposal will essentially be the same as that submitted last year but with revised “work dates.” The SCA generally suggests that proposals be submitted several months prior to the start of the proposed work dates. As I hope to arrive during December, we will propose the work dates to fall between early December and extend through April or later --- extensions are possible, but we try to have the span long enough to allow for any alterations in the schedule. Lest there be some need to submit early, we will plan to get the proposal in during September.

While we simply use “Amenmesse Project” in the heading above, this includes the work on and in KV-10 and KV-63. The major emphasis will be the resumption of work on the artifacts from KV-63, including restoration and conservation work on the coffins, examinations of the sealed storage jars and special studies involving plant and textile remains. The amount of materials is considerable and it will be necessary to have an additional season after 2008/2009. As of now we still do not know the extent of the contents of the remaining unopened storage jars. The contents of those jars will, in large measure, determine what specialists may have to be added next time.

Now as the are about to get into the autumn we should see an increase in the appearance of these UPDATES. We are looking forward to a successful season.

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UK - co-owner of Flats in Luxor Group. British in origin, Egyptian at heart. First visited Egypt in 1979 and finally got to move here in 2003. Been there, done it and got the t-shirt(IT Consultant, PCG Chairman, ex cult member). Finally living my dream: Egyptology (doing an online Egyptology course at Manchester Uni), sunshine, cold beer and Mahmoud. What more could a girl want?